Our goal here is to quantify how effective our NCAA Bracket Picks product was in delivering value to its customers. This is actually a somewhat complex process, for a number of reasons, but we do our best given the constraints.

The Bottom Line

31% of our customers won a prize in at least one bracket pool this year, compared to an expectation of 19%

So compared to expectations, our customers were about 60% more likely to win at least one bracket pool prize this year

Our customers finished “in the money” in 14% of pools they entered, compared to an expectation of 10%

So compared to expectations, our customers were about 40% more likely to win a prize in any bracket pool they entered

Note: These numbers assume that all competitors in our customers’ bracket pools were equally skilled. In addition, we have adjusted prize winning expectations to account for any cases where customers played multiple brackets in the same pool, and where customers played in multiple pools. If the baseline expectations for winning a prize seem high, that’s why.

Our Reactions

These results are pretty solid, and they surprised us a bit, in a good way.

Based on how the tournament played out, we knew that 2015 wouldn’t be one of our best years for bracket pick recommendations. Our tournament predictions saw eventual champion Duke as the third mostly likely team to win it all (tied with Wisconsin at 8.3%), but the Blue Devils were also relatively popular (picked by 9.3% of the public to win the title).

When the dust settled, our algorithms didn’t see the Blue Devils as a particularly good champion pick this year, in most any scoring system. As a result, none of our Best Brackets for various pool types had Duke winning it all.

However, our customers ended up doing a good job leveraging the broader scope of advice that our NCAA Bracket Picks product provides. In particular, many of our customers played multiple brackets we recommended, either in the same pool (as a portfolio strategy), or in different types of pools.

That approach helped diversity their risk and increased their chances of winning a prize, and it clearly paid dividends.

How We Define Success

At the most basic level, our goal is to help our customers win prizes in bracket pools. So, success to us means customers winning prizes.

However, our customers use our bracket picks and advice in a variety of ways. So if we had to measure our bracket pick performance by a single metric, it would not be any of these:

The number of correct picks in our top bracket for various scoring systems

The total number of points scored by our top bracket for various scoring systems

The percentile finish of our top bracket for 1-2-4-8-16-32 scoring in ESPN’s national bracket contest

Here’s why. First, the only goal of competing in a bracket pool is to beat your opponents. There’s no prize tied to getting a certain number of points or picks right.

Second, most of our customers don’t just play a single bracket, and all of them have a choice of brackets to use. We identify our top bracket for each pool type, but we also provide Alternative brackets for customers to choose from, primarily to play along with the Best Bracket as a portfolio strategy.

How Many Brackets Did Our Customers Use?

Based on our survey, nearly 80% of our customers used multiple brackets we recommended, and nearly 60% entered more than one bracket per pool:

Entry Distribution

% of Customers

1 pool, 1 entry

22%

1 pool, multiple entries

27%

Multiple pools, 1 entry per pool

19%

Multiple pools, multiple entries per pool

32%

And while half of our customers used 2, 3, or 4 brackets, a handful entered a dozen or more:

# of total brackets entered

% of Customers

1

22%

2

26%

3

13%

4

11%

5

7%

6

8%

7

4%

8

3%

9

2%

10

2%

11 to 20

2%

20 to 30

1%

more than 30

1%

In case you’re wondering, the most brackets any single customer reported entering was 72 (!), across 12 different pools.

The Impact Of Multiple Brackets

Customizing picks for specific types of pools and creating optimized portfolios of brackets are key features of our NCAA Bracket Picks product, and they directly impact customer value.

After Arizona lost to Wisconsin in the Elite 8, for example, we knew that our Best Brackets for the most popular scoring systems would suffer. We had projected Arizona as a bit more likely than Wisconsin to make the Final Four, and Arizona was also a less popular pick.

That’s a compelling profile, and we ended up having Arizona making the Final Four in over 99% of our Best Brackets for various types of pools.

At the same time, 34% of our Alternate brackets, which are designed to help diversify the key risks taken in our Best Brackets, had Wisconsin in the Final Four over Arizona. And 30% of those brackets had Wisconsin then beating Kentucky and making the championship game.

Settling On A Metric

So when it comes to evaluating the value we delivered to customers, we can’t just look at how accurate our NCAA tournament survival odds were or how our top bracket for one particular scoring system did. It makes more sense to look at broader metrics that evaluate winning in general.

We use these two:

How often our customers won at least one prize across all pools they entered, compared to expectations

How often our customers won a prize in an individual pool, compared to expectations

Past customer surveys we’ve done have indicated that our customers tend to prioritize winning something over coming in first place (or bust), so those metrics serve as good proxies for customer value.

We listed our overall results in “The Bottom Line” section at the top of the post. Below we’ll slice and dice them in a few different ways.

Digging Deeper Into The Results

While we’re very interested in the overall frequency with which our customers win prizes, investigating performance in different types of pools is informative as well.

Our survey asked customers for information about every pool that they defined in our product. Consequently, we can review how our resulting bracket pick recommendations did based three specific factors:

Pool Size. The larger the pool, the more likely that the pool champion will get lucky on some unlikely upset picks. So to increase your odds to win large pools, you need to adopt a riskier picking strategy than you’d use for smaller pools.

Scoring System. We support many different types of pool scoring systems (e.g. standard 1-2-4-8-16-32, other round-based scoring, seed value scoring, upset bonuses), and the scoring system can have a major impact on the picks we recommend.

Number of Brackets Entered. When a customer sets up a pool in our system, we don’t just recommend one bracket to play. We do identify a “Best Bracket” if you’re only entering one, but we also present additional brackets designed to be used together. (To accomplish this, we optimize the second bracket using only the results of pool simulations we ran where the Best Bracket didn’t win, and so on.)

For each of these breakdowns, we can report on the two primary measures:

The frequency at which our customers placed in the money in 2015

The frequency at which we’d expect our customers to place in the money, in the long run, if the bracket picking skill of everyone in each specific pool was identical

The second calculation takes into account both pool size and the number of entries our customers submitted in each pool, and gives us a baseline for comparing actual performance against expectations. (For example, one would expect a customer submitting 10 entries in a 1,000 person pool to win 1% of the time in the long run.)

Results By Pool Size

The results by pool size look about as we expected, given our pick recommendations and the way the tournament played out:

Pool Size

Expected % in the money

Actual % in the money

Edge

10 or fewer entries

21%

38%

1.8x

11 to 30 entries

15%

22%

1.5x

31 to 50 entries

11%

21%

1.8x

51 to 100 entries

10%

11%

1.1x

101 to 250 entries

7%

7%

1.1x

251 to 1000 entries

4%

1%

0.2x

more than 1000 entries

2%

1%

0.5x

Grand Total

10%

14%

1.4x

Our bracket picks this year were fairly “chalky” compared to previous years, with a lot of favorites advancing. We got some pushback from customers about this, and fielded several questions about why our brackets didn’t feature more upsets. The short answer is because every year is different, and that’s what our numbers indicated was optimal in 2015.

Small Pools

In the end, the focus on favorites this year served our customers well in small pools. Even though most of our Best Brackets had Kentucky winning it all and got two Final Four teams correct, our picks still provided a decent edge in smaller pools, thanks to good earlier-round decisions.

In the end, our customers in pools with 50 or fewer entries cashed 50% to 80% more often than one would expect.

Large Pools

In larger pools, a decent showing doesn’t cut it. In order to win a prize, you need to take calculated risks, and your big gambles (or most of them, at least) need to come through.

Our larger pool picks this year made some big bets on undervalued teams like Arizona, Gonzaga, and Utah. In retrospect, those decisions gave us a nice shot; both Gonzaga and Utah made it farther than the public expected, and all three teams ended up losing to an eventual NCAA finalist.

But especially once Duke, the nation’s third most popular tournament champion pick, won it all, it was pretty much a given that we’d log a sub-par performance in big pools this year.

Results By Scoring System

With so many scoring systems supported by our custom bracket picks tool, we have to group them into broad categories here.

In the table below, we grouped pools by whether the points awarded for each game (“Base scoring”) took into account a winning pick’s seed number or not. If not, we then subdivided based on whether they featured the traditional 1-2-4-8-16-32 round-based scoring system, or something else. Finally, we also split out pools that awarded upset bonus points.

It turns out when you look at it this way, there’s one type of pool where our customers did especially well this year: pools with seed based scoring, but without upset bonuses.

Base scoring

Upset Bonus?

Expected % in the money

Actual % in the money

Edge

Seed based

no

12%

37%

3.1x

Round based (1-2-4-8-16-32)

no

9%

11%

1.2x

Seed based

YES

11%

11%

1x

Round based (other)

no

10%

9%

0.9x

Round based

YES

12%

8%

0.7x

Grand Total

10%

14%

1.4x

This outcome appears to be the result of a couple factors:

There were several very close matchups where we picked chalk (the seed-based favorite) in most of our brackets for round-based scoring, but went with an upset pick for seed-based scoring, since it offered the potential to earn significantly more points for only a little more risk. In particular, many of our brackets for seed-based scoring featured #7 Wichita State beating #2 Kansas, #7 Michigan State beating #2 Virginia, #11 UCLA beating #6 SMU, and #11 Dayton beating #6 Providence.

Despite those key upsets, our Best Brackets for seed-based pools were still relatively chalky in the Elite 8 and beyond, which also ended up serving our customers well. In pools with upset bonuses, though, we generally suggested picking more upsets in the second weekend of the tournament, which didn’t benefit us.

Also worth noting: Despite not picking Duke as tournament champion in any of our Best Brackets for the popular 1-2-4-8-16-32 scoring system, our customers still won those pools more often than expected, thanks to earlier round picks and using our Alternative brackets.

Results By Number of Brackets Entered

In theory, as a smart player enters more brackets into a specific pool, two things should happen:

Their chance of winning a prize should increase

Their overall edge against the competition should decrease

To explain the second point, consider that for any type of bracket pool, there will be one combination of picks that gives you the absolute best chance to win (i.e. the maximum edge over your opponents). A smart player does their best to identify that bracket, and play it as their first entry.

By definition, then, any additional brackets the smart player enters, assuming those brackets have some different picks than the first bracket, are not quite as likely to win compared to the optimal, first bracket played.

Playing more brackets in a pool therefore should increase your overall odds of winning a prize, but your expected return on investment also decreases a bit, since you’re paying the same price to enter the pool with a second, third, etc. bracket that is not quite as good as the first bracket you entered.

As expected, we do see our customers’ relative edge decreasing as they enter more of our recommended brackets in a specific pool. Unfortunately, this year the percentage of our customers winning a prize (“Actual % in the money”) also decreased, once they entered more than two brackets in a pool:

Number of Brackets Entered

Expected % in the money

Actual % in the money

Edge

1

7%

13%

1.8x

2

12%

18%

1.5x

3

14%

15%

1x

more than 3

16%

14%

0.9x

Grand Total

10%

14%

1.4x

However, there’s another angle to consider here. People entering multiple brackets into a pool are generally in larger pools, and as we saw above, our performance in smaller pools this year was much better than our performance in larger pools.

So let’s look at the numbers again, taking pool size into account:

Pool Size: 50 or fewer

Number of Brackets Entered

Expected % in the money

Actual % in the money

Edge

1

11%

21%

2x

2

19%

31%

1.6x

3

25%

26%

1x

more than 3

36%

32%

0.9x

Pool Size: 51 to 250

Number of Brackets Entered

Expected % in the money

Actual % in the money

Edge

1

4%

4%

1x

2

8%

10%

1.3x

3

12%

12%

1x

more than 3

20%

21%

1.1x

Pool Size: more than 250

Number of Brackets Entered

Expected % in the money

Actual % in the money

Edge

1

2%

1%

0.6x

2

2%

0%

0x

3

3%

0%

0x

more than 3

6%

2%

0.3x

The data above is a bit noisy since some of these bins have a pretty small sample size; not many people enter more than 3 brackets in a pool that has fewer than 50 total entries. Still, these trends look closer to what we would expect to see.

Conclusion

When evaluating bracket pick performance, it’s imperative to understand the nature of bracket pools. You’re never expected to win, but when you do win, the return you earn makes up for years and years of trying.

And if you use the right strategies and commit to playing in pools for the long term, the expected returns are extremely compelling. That’s why we’ve made pools an area of focus for TeamRankings, even though we know that big wins aren’t going to come every year (or close to it), and we’ll never be able to promise that to customers.

As objectively as we can measure, our bracket picks delivered a nice edge to our customer base as a whole in 2015. Even though it wasn’t close to our best year, on average our customers were 60% more likely than expected to take home a bracket pool prize, and the year’s worth of bragging rights that come with it. Throw in the fact that we remove all stress and time from the pick-making process, even for pools with crazy scoring systems, and the overall value proposition passes the test.

More importantly, these results continue to validate all the work we’ve put in over the last 10+ years to use math, data, and technology to get an edge in bracket pools.

Of course, we realize that not all of our customers were happy with our picks this year. As much as it bothers us, that will always be the case, as it’s simply an unfortunate reality of our business. When one untimely bounce of a ball can spell doom for a critical pick, the year-to-year variance in our performance is likely to be substantial. In addition, in any given year, our picks for some types of pools (e.g. for seed-based scoring this year) may do quite well, while others don’t.

Regardless, our commitment is to keep improving and refining our methods every year, so that we always offer our customers their best possible chance to win.

We’re excited to improve next year’s product even more.

Appendix: How We Measure Bracket Pick Performance

Measuring how our picks did overall isn’t as easy as you may think. Here’s why:

Not everybody gets the same recommended picks. We use algorithms and bracket pool simulations to customize bracket picks for each of our customers, based on the characteristics of their pools. Our unique approach greatly enhances our overall edge, but it also means that not all of our customers get the same picks. If you’re in a 10-person pool with 1-2-4-8-16-32 scoring, for instance, our recommended brackets probably will look a lot different than our recommendations for a 2,000-person pool with 1-2-3-4-5-6 scoring and an upset bonus.

We create six customized brackets for every pool type. In addition to our “Best Bracket” for a given pool, we also present four supplementary brackets that customers can also play in the same pool as a portfolio strategy, as well as a “maximum expected points” bracket that most often represents a more conservative picking strategy.

We can’t directly measure how our picks do. We don’t run actual bracket pools on TeamRankings; people use ESPN, Yahoo!, CBS or other sites for that. We show customers our recommended picks, and then it’s up to them to enter those picks into whatever site is hosting their pool, or submit them to their pool commissioner. Of course, our customers also can make changes to our recommendations along the way.

Given these constraints, the most effective and efficient way for us to measure our bracket pick performance is to have our customers fill out an online survey to tell us how they did in their pools. It’s not a perfect solution; there could be bias related to which customers actually end up responding, and intentionally or not, customers could report incorrect information.

Still, it’s the best we can do. To try to counter any potential response bias, we offered a chance at a nice prize (a $150 Amazon gift card) just for completing the survey, and we discarded any survey answers that seemed to conflict details that the same customer had already entered on our site when setting up his or her pool.

As we did for the NCAA tournament, we’ve combined our raw models and ratings with data from other sources (e.g. NBA futures odds from the betting markets, which better reflect the impact of dynamics like teams resting players toward the end of the season), in order to craft a more accurate set of projections.

Along with those projections, we also released a suite of data, charts, and tools. Here’s what you’ll find in our newly updated NBA playoffs section:

These charts show the chance of every current series being won by each team in a specific number of games (for example, the chance the Spurs beat the Clippers in exactly 6 games is 23.4%). The data for these charts is frozen prior to each round, so you can come back and see how our projections did.

Last week, FiveThirtyEight published a post reviewing the accuracy of their 2015 NCAA tournament projections.

In that post, they compared their round-by-round survival odds against those from other analytically-oriented sites using a technique called Brier scores.

Since FiveThirtyEight didn’t include TeamRankings in the comparison (no hard feelings, as our advancement odds weren’t publicly available prior to the First Four play-in round, since they are part of our premium NCAA Bracket Picks package), we went ahead and added our 2015 results to the mix.

What We’re Measuring: Projections, Not Bracket Picks

What is being measured here is not the actual bracket picks we advised our customers to make; coming up with optimal picks for a bracket pool requires the analysis of several other types of data, such as pool size and public picking trends, in addition to team survival projections. (We’re going to publish another post soon on how our recommended brackets did this year.)

The table below simply compares how accurate various sites were at predicting how far teams were likely to make it in the 2015 tournament.

So How Did Our Projections Stack Up?

As you can see, our projected survival odds would have placed us tied with NumberFire for second place in the overall accuracy rankings, and barely (0.001) behind The Power Rank.

We think it’s fair to say that the three of us constituted the top tier in accuracy this year, at least when measuring by Brier scores.

However, our path to that top tier performance was fairly different:

We never had the absolute best performance in any given round

We made up for it with consistency, being the only competitor that ranked in the top half of accuracy scores in every single round

We had the second best Round of 32 projections, behind only FiveThirtyEight, and well ahead of the pack

Overall, we’re happy with this result. While ranking first obviously would have been nice, finishing in the top tier with consistently solid showings in every round is a sign that our score wasn’t overly reliant on a couple fluky results. That should also bode well for future tournaments.

Our 2015 NCAA Tournament Survival Odds

For reference, here were our 2015 NCAA Tournament round by round survival odds, before the First Four play-in round began, sorted by odds to win it all:

With MLB Opening Day 2015 approaching, it’s time to release our preseason ratings and projected standings.

The main purpose of these ratings is to provide a data-driven starting point for our MLB projected standings. Just like the past few years, in 2015 we’ll have fully automated win-loss predictions, playoff chances, and World Series win odds, and all the info will be updated every single day of the season to reflect the latest results and the most up to date MLB power ratings.

An Important Note: In other sports, we use our own data and models to come up with independent estimates of team quality, and then compare those to the market, and to other projections. For MLB, however, we’re simply not at the leading edge of preseason analysis.

So rather than rolling our own preseason ratings, these projections are based on a weighted average of betting market info and projections from other well respected sources.

We’re still publishing these in the interest of full disclosure, so that you know what the initial rating in our projection system was for each team. But we’re most definitely not recommending that you use these ratings and forecasts to go place preseason bets.

You may look at the projections below and think that they aren’t extreme enough. In a way, you’d be right — the best team in the league will almost certainly win more than the 94 games we’ve forecast for the Dodgers, and the worst will likely lose more than 95.

However, picking which teams will wildly exceed expectations is rather tricky, and on average these conservative predictions should provide a less biased starting point than more aggressive ones.

However, if you’d like to see our best case and worst case scenarios for each team, check out their team projections page. Here are the New York Yankees projections as an example. Follow that link and you’ll find a chart showing the projected odds of the Yankees winning any specific number of games, as well as a list of their toughest & easiest games, and a table showing how their chances of winning the World Series change depending on what seed they get in the playoffs.

Quick Predictions For The 2015 MLB Season

Let’s go over a few of the insights these projections provide, before laying out all the details below:

The most likely World Series result is a crosstown matchup, with the LA Dodgers beating the LA Angels … though the chance of that exact outcome occurring is under 1%.

The most wide open division is the AL East, where each team has between a 16% (Yankees) and 31% (Red Sox) chance of winning the division crown.

Conversely, the Nationals (62%) and Dodgers (58%) are the only teams that are favored against the field to win their divisions.

Will we see a World Series rematch? Unlikely. In fact, there’s almost a 50/50 chance (49%, actually) that both the Giants and Royals will miss the playoffs.

Here is how the playoffs would play out, if these projections ended up being spot on (which, to be clear, is very unlikely):

The first game on tonight’s docket is projected to be the closest: 3 seed Notre Dame vs 7 seed Wichita State. The teams tip off at 7:15PM Eastern in Cleveland, expecting that victory will bring a game against overwhelming favorite Kentucky in the Midwest Regional Final on Saturday.

Though some might see that as a dubious reward since either Notre Dame or Wichita State would only have a 15% chance to win against Kentucky, both teams also would relish the opportunity to hand Kentucky its first loss, particularly Wichita State given their battle last year against the Wildcats.

Despite the seeding, Wichita State is the slight favorite tonight. The offshore betting markets currently favor Wichita State by two points, and our models give them a 51% chance to emerge victorious.

Wichita State on Offense

The Shockers are in the top 10% in the nation in offensive efficiency, scoring 108.5 points per 100 possessions to rank 28th. Notre Dame’s defensive efficiency is slightly above average, allowing 98.9 points per 100 possessions to rank 151st. Exploiting this advantage can help Wichita State earn the victory.

There is really only one aspect of Wichita State’s offense that stands out: an exceptionally low turnover rate. They are 5th in the country there, turning the ball over on just 12.7% of their plays. Notre Dame is poor at forcing turnovers as they rank only 281st in the country, so it would be a surprise if Wichita State had double-digit turnovers again as they did facing Kansas in the Round of 32.

Wichita State also offensively rebounds relatively well, gathering 33% of their own misses. That ranks 49th in the country. Notre Dame is a below average defensive rebounding team, so Wichita has a chance to take advantage of this strength as well.

Wichita State is good but not great at other aspects of offense:

Their effective FG% of 50.6% ranks 96th in the country

They’re not exceptionally good or bad from long range (92nd in the nation with a 35.9 3P%), when shooting two pointers (114th with a 48.9% 2P%) or at the line (70.3% FT% which ranks 140th)

Neither free throws nor three pointers are an unusual fraction of their offense.

Notre Dame’s biggest strength on defense is not fouling. The Irish only allow 0.235 free throw attempts per field goal attempt, which ranks 2nd in the country. Preventing those free points from the charity stripe is a key advantage. Since Wichita State is only average in drawing fouls, the Shockers are unlikely to have a lot of opportunities from the line tonight.

Notre Dame on Offense

Notre Dame has the 2nd most efficient offense in the country behind only Wisconsin. The Irish score 118.0 points per 100 possessions. However, Wichita State is 8th in the country defensively allowing just 88.8 points per 100 possessions. This will be a battle of strength against strength.

Notre Dame’s success offensively is a result of excelling at two of the fundamentals of basketball: shooting and protecting the ball.

Notre Dame’s 58.4% effective field goal percentage ranks 2nd in the country. They lead the country in 2P% at 58.3% and are 20th from long range with a 38.9% 3P%.

They’re also shooting 74.0% from the free throw line to rank 31st in the nation.

They are above average in 3P rate, ranking 78th (38% of their field goal attempts are three point attempts)

They’re essentially average at getting to the line (161st with 0.373 free throw attempts per field goal attempt)

They rank 6th in the country by allowing turnovers on just 12.8% of their offensive plays

Wichita State has a number of strengths on defense to challenge Notre Dame’s offense. Highlights include:

Wichita State ranks 8th in the nation at defending two pointers, allowing teams to shoot just 42.1%. It will be interesting to see if they can neutralize Notre Dame’s strength in that realm.

The Shockers are one of the better teams in the country at forcing turnovers. They rank 28th in the nation at opponent turnover rate (18.8% of opponent plays end in a turnover) and are 2nd in steal rate swiping the ball on 5.5% of their opponents’ plays. Again, which team’s strength can prevail will be fascinating to watch and could be the key to the game.

Conclusion

Tonight’s game should be a great matchup between two evenly matched teams. This will be particularly true when Notre Dame has the ball and one of the nation’s top 10 offenses confronts a top 10 defense.

If Wichita State can play to a draw on that side of the floor, they have a chance to take advantage of the Irish offensively. The point guard battle ought to be particularly notable as the smaller Fred VanVleet has yet another opportunity to show he can outplay a future pro in Notre Dame’s 6’5″ Jerian Grant. VanVleet has proved people wrong in the past and has the chance to lead his team to the Elite 8 tonight.

Perhaps the juiciest matchup Thursday night pits Wisconsin against North Carolina in the early game (7:47 PM Eastern tip) at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. The game features the 1 seeded (and 4th in our Predictive Rankings) Badgers against the marquee program of the 4 seeded (8th in Predictive Ranking) Tar Heels and will showcase multiple future pros on the floor.

At the moment, our models currently give Wisconsin a 69% chance to win the game, while the betting markets see them as 6 point favorites.

Wisconsin on Offense

As you’d expect from one of the top teams in the nation, Wisconsin has a a number of strengths. Most notably, they have the #1 offense in the nation on a per possession basis scoring 118.5 points per 100 possessions. This fact is often overlooked by the general public since the team is only 46th in points per game as a result of playing at one of the slowest paces in the nation. UNC’s defense ranks 82nd in the country allowing 95.4 points per 100 posessions. What makes the Badgers offense so effective and does UNC have a chance to stop them?

Wisconsin leads the country by a wide margin in protecting the ball with only a 12.2% turnover rate. The gap between the Badgers and 2nd ranked Davidson is 1.6%, the same as the gap between Davidson and Virginia, the 17th ranked team. UNC ranks only 248th in the country at forcing turnovers, so expect very few miscues with the ball in Wisconsin’s hands.

The Badgers shoot the ball very efficiently. Their effective FG% of 54.7% ranks 16th in the country.

In particular, Wisconsin is 7th in the nation on two-pointers shooting 55.4%.

They’re also 12th at the line with a 76.1% FT%, but they do not get to the line at a high rate. They’re only 213th in FTA/FGA at 0.356.

Wisconsin doesn’t shoot the three particularly well as their 35.8 3P% ranks only 101st. Their 3P rate is similarly slightly above average.

UNC’s defense is excellent from behind the three point line. They allow teams to shoot only 30% from beyond the arc, ranking 12th in the nation. Interestingly, teams take a high number of threes against the Tar Heels, as their three point rate allowed is 262nd with 36.8% of their opponents’ field goal attempts from behind the arc. This generally seems to play right into UNC’s hands and could help when the teams face off if Wisconsin attempts more threes than usual.

North Carolina on Offense

North Carolina’s offense is not so shabby itself. Overall, the team is in the top 10% ranking 29th in the country by scoring 108.4 points per 100 possessions. Wisconsin’s defense is comparable, ranking 34th and only allowing 93.1 points per 100 possessions. What should we watch for when UNC has the ball?

The Tar Heels’ biggest strength is offensive rebounding. They rank 8th in offensive rebounding percentage, gathering 38.7% of their own misses. Fascinatingly, defensive rebounding percentage is a strength of Wisconsin as they are 3rd in the nation and only allow opponents to gather 21.5% of their misses. Prevailing on the glass here could dictate which team wins the game.

North Carolina is a below average team at getting to the line. Their 0.353 free throw attempts per field goal attempt is only 224th in the country. Wisconsin leads the country in not sending teams to the line allowing only 0.207 free throw attempts per field goal attempt. Couple those facts with UNC’s 70.3 FT% which is 138th in the nation and North Carolina should not expect to get lots of easy points from the charity stripe on Thursday.

Conclusion

While Wisconsin is the clear favorite, there are definitely avenues for North Carolina to pursue and earn the upset. The Tar Heels may need to dominate the offensive boards as they have all year to have a good shot at winning. This will be a tough challenge against Wisconsin’s defense and one that will be tougher if Kennedy Meeks doesn’t play or is not at full strength. He is UNC’s best offensive rebounder gathering 12.9% of misses himself which ranks 67th in the country. Without his contribution, it could be a long night for North Carolina.

Here at TeamRankings, we like to say that every tournament is unique — kind of like a snowflake, many of which happened to be falling on my New Jersey office during last Friday’s games. (If you live in the area, hopefully you avoided a rough commute and took the day off to watch the games.)

Similarly, the path of teams through the NCAA tournament can get rougher, or easier, based on events outside of their control. Here’s a look at how various teams’ chances have evolved over the course of the tournament so far.

2015 NCAA Champion Odds

The chart below charts the odds of each Sweet 16 team to win the 2015 NCAA championship, and how those odds have changed from round to round:

Two things jump out from this chart:

Kentucky is still the overwhelming favorite to win it all. That’s not exactly news, but all the whitespace between Kentucky’s line and the rest of the field is striking.

Despite winning two games, Kentucky’s odds to win it all haven’t materially changed, primarily because they were already projected as overwhelming favorites in the Rounds of 64 and 32. Kentucky still has just over a 40% chance to finish as undefeated National Champions.

We can also see that Arizona remains the second most likely team to win the tournament at 16.2%, by a sizable margin over Duke at 11.5%.

Unfortunately for the Wildcats of Arizona, they would have to face the Wildcats of Kentucky in the Final Four rather than the championship game. Currently there’s a 41% chance that Arizona and Kentucky match up during the tournament’s final weekend, and a 58% chance that a team named “Wildcats” will be the national champion this year.

Other observations:

Arizona, Duke, Gonzaga, and Michigan State have all seen their odds increase a fair amount relative to their expectations at the start of the tournament.

Wisconsin’s odds to win it all have barely budged since the start of the tournament. They still have about a 1 in 12 chance to be NCAA champions.

Benefiting from the upsets in the bottom half of the South region, Gonzaga, which faces #11 UCLA in the Sweet 16, has passed Wisconsin to have the fourth best odds to win the championship. The Zags also have the third best odds of all remaining teams to make the Elite 8.

Odds To Make The Final Four

Of course, the tournament is not just about winning it all. The chart below portrays changes in each team’s odds of reaching the Final Four, so it effectively decompresses the chart above. As a result, we can better see how the teams with less realistic hopes of winning it all are faring:

From reviewing the graphs, we notice the following:

Although Kentucky’s chances look pretty stable, Arizona’s odds to progress have increased substantially, thanks to a Baylor loss and a win over a strong Ohio State team.

Again, Wisconsin’s advancement odds have changed little from the start of the tournament. Even though they are now #4 in our predictive rankings, Wisconsin would have to face Arizona, who is ranked #2, for a Final Four berth. Therefore, the Badgers have just the 6th best odds to make it there.

It is now more likely than not that Wisconsin and Arizona will face off in the Elite 8.

Michigan State has increased its Final Four odds more dramatically than any other team, thanks in part to the upset of 1 seed Villanova in their region. As a result, the 7 seed Spartans are actually now the slight favorite to emerge from the East.

Oklahoma, Louisville, and NC State are also the beneficiaries of Villanova’s early exit. Each team has seen their Final Four odds more than double; NC State’s have increased from 2.1% to 15.8% according to our models.

Wichita State’s chances of reaching the Final Four increased a fair bit with their upset of Kansas, but with Kentucky in their region the impact was limited. Wichita’s chances of emerging from the Midwest have increased from 3.4% to 9.8%.

However, Wichita State’s chances of making the Elite 8 are now 50.8%, meaning there is a 47% chance of a Kentucky-Wichita State rematch from last year’s tournament.

Squandered Chances

For many of us, the early upsets are just as much a part of the tournament experience, if not more so. Helped by the highlight packages CBS shows every year, a lot of people probably remember Bryce Drew and Valparaiso beating Ole Miss in 1998, or Hampton upsetting Iowa State in 2001 — but forget the teams that actually won the tournament in those years. (Answers below.)

To help understand the magnitude of the upsets so far, we can look at some of the top tier teams that did not make the Sweet 16 this year, and their odds to make the Final Four as of the start of the 2015 tournament.

Observations:

1 seed Villanova had the fourth best chance to make the Final Four at the start of the tournament, and our models gave them an 82% chance to beat NC State on Saturday. Nova brought it back to a one point deficit with one second to go, but they couldn’t fully overcome a 12 point deficit with 13 minutes remaining in the second half.

While Villanova lost in the Round of 32, the most stunning upset of the tournament so far has been 3 seed Iowa State’s loss to UAB in the Round of 64. We gave Iowa State a 92% chance to win that game.

3 seed Baylor’s loss to Georgia State was also a huge upset. While their odds of making the Final Four were not great, Baylor had a 79% chance to win their first game.

Despite being a 2 seed, Kansas never had a great opportunity to make the Final Four. In fact, Wichita State even ended up being the favorite against Kansas at some sports books. Even if they had won, Kansas were still on a path to face Kentucky in the Elite 8, and their odds to make the Final Four were never over 8%.

What’s Next?

There are some great matchups in store during the Sweet 16 and Elite 8, including a potential West Regional final pitting Arizona against Wisconsin.

If 1 seed Duke and 2 seed Gonzaga face off, that game could also become an instant classic, and a Kentucky-Wichita State rematch would also be a great storyline (even if Kentucky would be an 85% favorite to win).

In the Sweet 16, Duke-Utah has the chance to be compelling as it is the most likely upset of the remaining 1 and 2 seeds, and also features five likely future NBA players including potential #1 pick Jahlil Okafor.

History Lesson Answers

In 1998, Tubby Smith led a Kentucky team headlined by Jamaal Magloire, Nazr Mohammed, Scott Padgett, his son Saul Smith, and current Manhattan coach Steve Masiello over Andrew Miller, Micheal Doleac, and the Utah Utes coached by Rick Majerus.

In 2001, Coach K won his third championship with a stacked Duke team including Shane Battier, Jay Williams, Carlos Boozer, Mike Dunleavy Jr, and Chris Duhon. They beat Lute Olson and the Arizona Wildcats in the championship to deny Gilbert Arenas, Richard Jefferson, Luke Walton and Loren Woods the chance to cut down the nets.

]]>https://www.teamrankings.com/blog/ncaa-basketball/tournament-survival-odds-changes/feed0Wisconsin’s Road to the Final Four & Championshiphttps://www.teamrankings.com/blog/ncaa-basketball/wisconsin-road-to-the-final-four
https://www.teamrankings.com/blog/ncaa-basketball/wisconsin-road-to-the-final-four#commentsFri, 20 Mar 2015 01:38:58 +0000http://www.teamrankings.com/blog/?p=14377See more at TeamRankings.com

Based on algorithmic NCAA tournament survival odds and matchup analysis, Wisconsin faces the toughest road to the championship of any 1 seed.

Previously, we have looked at Kentucky, Villanova, and Duke’s path to the National Championship. Today, let’s look at the 1 seed in the West: the Wisconsin Badgers.

Wisconsin’s Odds by Round

We’ve released our round by round survival odds for each team that made the tournament. From those numbers, we can determine the chances Wisconsin wins in each round, if they make it there:

Some indications from the chart above:

Wisconsin has the toughest path of the four 1 seeds, with their games getting progressively harder through the Final 4

However, if Wisconsin can make the Championship Game, they can expect to be favored

Wisconsin’s Odds against the West

Using our matchup tool, we can examine the odds of a team to win against any other opponent in the West region:

Key points of note here:

Our models view 2 seed Arizona as the strongest team in the West Region (and the strongest 2 seed in the field)

If they both make it, our models give Wisconsin a 44% chance to beat Arizona in the Regional Final, so they’re not expected to win

4 seed North Carolina should present slightly more of a challenge to Wisconsin in their Sweet 16 game then 3 seed Baylor would in the Elite 8 (Ed. note: And now the path to the Elite 8 just got even easier, thanks to Georgia State’s upset of Baylor)

Wisconsin’s win odds against any other team in the region are 78% or better

Wisconsin’s Odds against the Top Seeds

We can also look at Wisconsin’s odds against the top seeds in the tournament:

The highlights:

Kentucky and Arizona are the only teams that our models would favor against Wisconsin

However, both of those teams are in Wisconsin’s half of the bracket

If form holds, Wisconsin will also face the toughest 4 seed in the tournament (by a wide margin) in their Sweet 16 game when they face North Carolina

]]>https://www.teamrankings.com/blog/ncaa-basketball/wisconsin-road-to-the-final-four/feed0Duke’s Road to the Final Four & Championshiphttps://www.teamrankings.com/blog/ncaa-basketball/dukes-road-to-the-final-four-championship
https://www.teamrankings.com/blog/ncaa-basketball/dukes-road-to-the-final-four-championship#commentsThu, 19 Mar 2015 03:42:19 +0000http://www.teamrankings.com/blog/?p=14364See more at TeamRankings.com

Based on algorithmic NCAA tournament survival odds and matchup analysis, Duke would be a favorite in every game except the National Championship.

]]>https://www.teamrankings.com/blog/ncaa-basketball/dukes-road-to-the-final-four-championship/feed0Villanova’s Road to the Final Four & Championshiphttps://www.teamrankings.com/blog/ncaa-basketball/villanovas-road-to-the-final-four
https://www.teamrankings.com/blog/ncaa-basketball/villanovas-road-to-the-final-four#commentsWed, 18 Mar 2015 15:40:04 +0000http://www.teamrankings.com/blog/?p=14331See more at TeamRankings.com

Based on algorithmic round survival odds and matchup analysis, here's a look the highs and lows of Villanova's path to the 2015 NCAA championship.

Now let’s take a look at the Selection Committee’s overall 2 seed, Villanova, using the projections we generate while calculating our optimized bracket picks.

Not surprisingly, Nova’s chances to cut down the nets are much lower than Kentucky, and not just because Kentucky is their most likely opponent in the Championship Game.

Villanova’s Odds To Win Each Round

With the 2015 bracket now out, we’ve released round by round survival odds for each team that made the tournament. We can use that data to determine the chances Villanova wins in each round, if they make it there:

Some indications from the chart above:

Villanova is strongly favored through their Sweet 16 game

They are likely to be slight favorites overall in both the Elite 8 and Final Four game, but a few opponents would be favored to beat them

If they make the NCAA championship game, the Villanova is likely to be an underdog

Villanova’s Odds against the East

Using our matchup tool, we can examine the odds of a team to win against any other opponent. Charting Villanova’s odds against their opponents in the East shows:

Key points of note here:

Villanova’s toughest game would be in the Regional Final against Virginia, which would be close to a toss-up

7 seed Michigan State and 3 seed Oklahoma are tied for the second toughest opponents in the region

Thanks to the structure of the bracket, Villanova would only have to face one of those three teams

Villanova’s odds against the rest of the region are 73% or better

Villanova’s Odds against the Top Seeds

We can also look at Villanova’s odds against the top seeds in the tournament:

The highlights:

The committee eased Villanova’s path by not placing their most challenging 2, 3, or 4 seed in the East

Villanova is also fortunate that they wouldn’t have to play Kentucky until the final game.

Of all the teams on Villanova’s side of the bracket, Duke is the only one that would be favored against them, and it is by a very slim margin

The real question, though, is this: How far should you pick Villanova in your bracket pool, given your scoring system and other details? Here’s how to find out.